Diagnos
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Everything you need to use Diagnos

Short answers to the questions we get most. If none of this solves it, write to us and a person will reply.

Getting started

01

Photograph or type your work

Take a picture of your notebook, or type your steps one per line. Handwriting works; a straight, well-lit photo works better.

02

Read the diagnosis

Diagnos marks the first step where the reasoning broke and names the misconception behind it. Later steps are marked as carried-over, not as new mistakes.

03

Answer the questions

The tutor will only ask. It will not give you the answer, on purpose: the point is that you say it out loud yourself.

Frequently asked questions

Because being told the rule does not remove a misconception. It gets replaced when you see your own rule produce an absurd result. That is why the tutor asks instead of explaining, and why the third practice exercise is designed so your own mistake contradicts itself.

Yes. Take the photo straight on, with the page well lit and no shadow across it. If a step is transcribed wrong, retype that step by hand and run it again.

Diagnos will say so and will not invent an error. It only opens the Socratic dialogue when it finds a broken step.

No. Guest mode gives you the full diagnosis, the dialogue and the practice. What you lose is history: nothing is saved between sessions.

Aggregated, anonymous counts of misconceptions. No names, no grades, no individual answers. It is a map of what to re-teach, not a marking sheet.

First-year secondary school algebra, classified against a twelve-entry catalogue of documented misconceptions. Anything outside that is out of scope for now.

References

The sources the catalogue rests on. Every misconception points to the work where it is documented, so you can check it yourself.

  1. Kieran, C. (1981). Concepts associated with the equality symbol. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 12(3), 317–326.
  2. Küchemann, D. (1981). Algebra. En K. Hart (Ed.), Children's Understanding of Mathematics: 11–16. John Murray.
  3. Matz, M. (1982). Towards a process model for high school algebra errors. En D. Sleeman y J. S. Brown (Eds.), Intelligent Tutoring Systems. Academic Press.
  4. Fischbein, E., Deri, M., Nello, M. S. y Marino, M. S. (1985). The role of implicit models in solving verbal problems in multiplication and division. Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, 16(1), 3–17.
  5. De Bock, D., Van Dooren, W., Janssens, D. y Verschaffel, L. (2002). Improper use of linear reasoning: an in-depth study of the nature and the irresistibility of secondary school students' errors. Educational Studies in Mathematics, 50(3), 311–334.
  6. Vlassis, J. (2004). Making sense of the minus sign or becoming flexible in 'negativity'. Learning and Instruction, 14(5), 469–484.
  7. Ni, Y. y Zhou, Y.-D. (2005). Teaching and learning fraction and rational numbers: the origins and implications of whole number bias. Educational Psychologist, 40(1), 27–52.

Accessibility

Diagnos is built to be usable with a keyboard alone: every control is reachable by tabbing and shows a visible focus ring. Form fields have labels, errors are announced to screen readers, and the Socratic dialogue is a live region so new tutor messages are read out.

If you have reduced motion enabled in your system settings, every animation on the site is disabled automatically — nothing moves, fades or slides.

Colour is never the only way information is conveyed: the broken step is marked with an icon and a text label, not just with amber.

If something is unusable for you, tell us. Accessibility problems are treated as bugs, not as requests.